Dancing About Architecture, Vol. XVI

Vol. XVI

Tonight’s Episode: Tizmorim

March 7, 2008, Tifereth Israel Synagogue, Del Cerro, CA

I am now done. I sang like the fat lady, as they say in the ad biz. In the past several days I have bought a house in Philadelphia, sold my apartment in San Diego, and played what was therefore my last gig in this ole town, at least as a resident. Oh no, wait…there’s one more month to go! I forgot! OK, so let’s say I played my second-to-last gig here. I suppose I’ll be playing again on the first Friday next month, my little swan song, right after walking out for the last time from the job I’ve had for the last 8 ½ years. Hooboy.

This past Friday I played for the synagogue’s monthly Simcha Shabbat service. It’s supposed to be for families, kid-friendly and all, which means it is designed to be brief. It always goes by rather quickly for me at least, because I am standing up on the raised bimah in front of everybody, playing music for most of the time. This month it was just me on clarinet and Sandy on piano; guitarist Ted was MIA. The crowd was of a respectable size, maybe 75 people or so, many of whom I didn’t recognize. Our rabbi leads the service, typically from a podium placed on the floor level in front of the seats or strolling down the center aisle as he deems fit. As usual, he had to come over to the piano to yank Sandy out of his private reverie and make him stop playing some jazz standard so we could start.

The rabbi got things going with a little nign, a wordless melody. This one in particular is at an andante pace, and it’s lilting and pretty except for the bridge which I don’t really like, and it also serves as the tune for one of the prayers in the service. If it were up to me, though, I’d introduce a new nign every week, or at least rotate through a collection of them. We Jews know a good tune when we hear one and it’s sort of part of the Jewish experience to be open to learning new ones, or pulling old ones out of the armoire. Consider Shlomo Carlebach, the superstar Hasidic singer/songwriter, said to have written a nign on his way to every single concert. Either way you approach it, the point here is you’re supposed to sing something. Done right, a nign can provide the foundation for reaching a kind of ecstasy. You sing it as a group over and over again, and each time each singer can find some new part of the melody to shift, expand, alter, or otherwise develop, so that with every iteration the spontaneous melody-harmonization gets more complex and intricate, and usually more beautiful. However, standing up there removed from the vox populi, it’s often hard for me to tell from that vantage point and over the rabbi’s mic-ed voice whether or not people are singing, or just moving their lips and breathing softly. Whichever it was, the congregation was certainly not reaching towards ecstasy. That’s the trouble with American Conservative Jews – we don’t know how to be spiritual. Even though we went through the tune several times, the singing never changed. Everyone just sat there sort of half-singing, some just moaning. So it was, as usual, up to Sandy and I to swirl it upwards to a climax before a soft dénouement. We did a fair job of this, but we did not reach near the heights we can get when Ted is also playing. There are two reasons for this: 1) Sandy has a great ear for tone but he does not ever, ever listen to what’s going on around him, and 2) my powers of musical expansion are limited. Not zero, mind you, but I listen to enough music to know how much farther I could go in this regard. This nign made a decent intro to the service, but it wasn’t too special.

We really raced through most of the rest of the service. Even though this is about the only real synagogue service I’m attending these days – I haven’t been on a Saturday morning for many moons – these Simcha Shabbats are not spiritual experiences for me. It’s Friday night and I have to leave work super early and deal with about 30 miles of traffic to get home, pick up the family and get all the way out to shul, so I’m usually not in the most meditative mood. That’s why I like Saturday morning services: at three hours in length, it’s just the right amount of time for me to get my pray on and stay in that groove for a while. These Friday night jobs are just that: jobs. This perspective is enhanced by the nature of the service, too, besides its brevity. Before each prayer the rabbi will curtly describe in English the main punchline of the Hebrew text, as in, “We welcome Shabbat into our lives as though we are welcoming a bride,” and then Sandy and I launch into L’cha Dodi. And so on. That prayer in particular has a variety of very beautiful tunes to sing it, but we always use the same one every time. Part of the fun of this gig for me is supposed to be that I can get into these tunes and find new modes of expression, in front of a friendly audience. So I do appreciate the opportunity to play tunes like this over and over, but novelty every once in a while would be welcome, too.

Actually this time there were two breaks from routine. For Oseh Shalom, we went back to a more traditional melody, which I really like, instead of this modern one by Debbie Friedman that has a bridge I just can’t wrap myself around. This was a relief also because without Ted on guitar, it’s hard to build the Friedman tune to a big sound, which the rabbi always motions for us to do and it’s apparently why he likes the tune. And we sang the Shehechiyanu prayer, which we normally skip, using this ole chestnut melody that I think every Jewish kid learns in summer camp. Sandy didn’t know it (he’s a Republican – probably never went to summer camp) but he picked it up right away, mostly I believe from following me, and it came out pretty good. One other nice part of the service was when everyone with a birthday or anniversary or whatever in the coming month came up and stood under the chuppah for a blessing and a chorus of “Happy Birthday”, Rachel and Jackie came up so Rachel could announce her step-mother’s 30^th birthday, which is actually today, as I write this.

I’m starting to get a tad sad over leaving this place, even though I basically hate living here. And I’m looking forward to the next, and my last, Simcha Shabbat next month. But maybe I’ll find someplace to play in Philly. Stay tuned for more tunes, mayn Yidelech!

Dancing About Architecture, Vol. XV

Tonight’s Episode: Nothing New Under the Sun

March 4, 2008

Last week was a big musical disappointment. I mean, it was a big disappointment, musically speaking. “Musicals”, as a general rule, are not disappointing to me, because I hold very low expectations for them, and those expectations are, as a general rule, met smack on the button. So it is deeply and bitterly ironic that one of the two disappointing events in my music life this week involved the discrediting in part of a musical I actually liked. Now I can only trod heavily along the topsy-turvy Mobius Strip of Uncertainty, not knowing whether I like anything or love everything or dislike nothing or have no opinion at all.

From the point of view of anyone else, it’s all because of a small thing, really. A trifle. ‘See, back in the halcyon days of my youth, everything right was wrong. I’m referring to the 1990s, when everything was as it should have been and yet that was most definitively my worst decade yet. For most of it we had a good, smart, dedicated and basically sensible President, the economy was healthy, I was in college and then married and then a new father, and was in and out of grad school – these features stand in sharp contrast to the state of the world during the rest of my life so far, which has always been characterized by bad, idiotic, careless and destructive Presidents, anemic economies, and other shit stains like junior high school and being a post-doc. So relatively speaking, the 1990s should have been a boondoggle for me. But I was, through it all, just a big fucking idiot. Then too, popular music suffered badly under the crushing blows of mass media juggernaut excesses, FCC deregulation and Kurt Cobain’s suicide. This was countered in small but tangible part by the blossoming of avant-garde, post jazz, whateveryoucallit weird wild artistic ugly-beautiful music, mostly coming out of New York, and mostly following the baton of Mr. John Zorn. He is the subject of the second disappointment for this week, but later. Now, the first disappointment reaches back to those stupid ‘90s when I actually, honestly LIKED Disney movie musicals. And this is now my problem.

For a while there, Disney was doing great with their animated movie musicals. They had a terrific songwriting team, the animation was fresh, the stories were interesting enough – in short, these movies actually had some soul. My favorite of these was, and I suppose still is, “Beauty and the Beast”. The songs were catchy and the lyrics sublimely crafty, the pacing was tight, and the writers had enough stuffing actually to work in conventions like foreshadowing which rarely seem worth Disney’s time or effort anymore. I was also in love with Belle, the heroine, and I’m proud to say that my wife – the current and future, wonderful one, not the one from the ‘90s when I was the big fucking idiot – embodies that character’s most adorable features. But the real meat of it, the stuff that propelled this musical onto Broadway, was the collection of winning songs by Alan Mencken coupled with unflaggingly delightful lyrics from the late, great Howard Ashman. As a college student, I actually spent many slackful hours watching this movie. I love particularly the opening scene during which David Ogden Steirs (sp?) narrates in his deep British voice the back story against stained glass animation, dissolving into a gorgeous panorama of primavera spring forest, waterfall and castle, then sweeping right into the opening number. The incidental music for this expository scene I know very well. So imagine my surprise and delight in hearing that music played over the classical radio station as I was taking my daughter to school! Wow – it’s the opening music from “Beauty and the Beast” – this is what I said to my daughter.

But NO! It wasn’t that at all! It was CARNIVAL OF THE ANIMALS by Camille Saint-Saens!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We’re not talking, like, a borrowed theme here. This was, note for note, matched arrangement, the exact same music. OK, OK, maybe it’s a mistake. Maybe Saint-Saens is credited in the film and Mencken was only responsible for writing the rest of the music. This is possible and I haven’t checked to see if that’s the case. But certainly Mencken is given long shrift for writing all the music for this movie. And he stole this music from someone else! Just lifted it right off the pages and gave it to musicians and they recorded it and it was put into the film. It made me sad. And it gave me to wonder – how often does this kind of public domain plagiarism (if that’s what really happened here) occur? I can think of another example off the top of my head: the theme from “Knight Rider” I heard once as a two-bar phrase in a baroque trumpet concerto. But this was bigger. An irony can be found here in knowing that Saint-Saens was a staunch conservative when it came to Western art music, believing that it had reached its peak of necessary innovation and that “originality in music is fatal.” Well who’s dying now, Cammy? It’s just upsetting. Sure, I’d expect this sort of cheap pickpocketing from the likes of Andrew Lloyd Weber or James Newton Howard, but I like to think my Bernard Herrmanns and Franz Waxmans and, yes, Alan Menckens are above all that. Alas.

That’s all there is to say about it, really. It just made me a little sad, and I lost a little something. The second disappointment, completely disconnected from the first, is that while in Philadelphia last weekend looking for a house I got caught up in my mission and missed an opportunity to see John Zorn play, which I haven’t done since, well, the 1990s. Perhaps it’s time for a good President again.

Dancing About Architecture, Vol. XIV

Tonight’s Episode: Punkt Azoy at Tifereth Israel Synagogue, Del Cerro, California

February 2, 2008

It’s a perfectly dreary Sunday morning and I’m writing a post to pass the time until our open house starts this afternoon, probably with no people. I can’t begin to count how many appointments have been canceled on me here because the other party is afraid to venture out into a light rain. We watched a great old movie last night, “Sorry, Wrong Number”, with Barbara Stanwyck and Burt Lancaster, during which I enjoyed my extra-large gimlet a bit too much, and I’m paying for it a little now. The secret, if you must know, is simple syrup and a fresh lime. Sweet and sour, just like I like my femme fatales.

Going a bit out of order here. A rundown of this little gig I played at the beginning of the month, certain to be my penultimate performance in San Diego before the big move East, ought to be shared with the world, I guess. Probably more people will read this than actually heard us play. This thing got set up following a cold call from someone at my synagogue who was in charge of running a gala event honoring the 20^th anniversary of our rabbi’s tenure there. The gala was shaping up to be a big deal, with a stand-up comedian, jazz band, catered dinner (kosher, = expensive), and lots of special guest speakers. The guy certainly deserved it, as he is universally loved for being the real heart, mind and soul of the place. The organizer wanted to have klezmer music played during the cocktail hour, and had heard Risa and I play once a few years ago for a little free concert we did as part of a Tuesday night Jewish culture series. I was really honored that he remembered and thought well enough of us to ask us to participate in the event.

I met Risa about eight years ago by pure serendipity. I was new to San Diego and floundering about looking for other musicians with whom to play klezmer music. It may surprise you, but this can be rather a difficult task. Like anything else, to do something well requires study, dedication and a lot of practice. Now I can’t say I’m a great klezmer clarinetist, but I’ve worked hard at it and I am good enough to know how much I don’t know. This state of being is deceptively hard to achieve, as is evident by the music of Against Me! and other derivative bands of their ilk. Anyhoops, adverts in the local papers for klezmer musicians had turned up only a few people, mostly Irish fiddlers and such who, however well-versed they may have been in this or that style, were novices at klezmer music and though I respected their interested that wasn’t what I was looking for. Somehow I found out about this concert of Hungarian Gypsy music which was to feature cimbalom virtuoso Kalman Balogh, who had recently gone on a duo tour with my former klezmer clarinet teacher. When I called for tickets, the woman on the other end was very chatty and, after extracting from me my interest in klezmer music, promised to introduce me to her friend Risa who played the accordion and who was also going to the concert. I attended with my musician pal Bill, the concert was amazing, and Risa and I were thereby introduced. We started jamming together and eventually decided to call ourselves a band, onto which I imposed the name Punkt Azoy (Yiddish for “just so” – hey, I like the sound of it).

Over these years we’ve played a handful of gigs at libraries, weddings, schools, festivals, etc. Neither of us has put much effort into advertising, and as for me I am happy most of the time to just get together to play music, especially since I rarely take the time otherwise to practice. Risa is particularly good at looking at a piece of music with just the melody, and picking out the chords on the accordion while sight reading. I’m a little less good at that. I’m better at learning tunes from recordings, which is really the best way to learn these songs, whereas Risa struggles more with this. So I transcribed a lot of tunes from recordings. We complement each other somewhat and we’ve built up a pretty solid and extensive repertoire. She is sometimes inclined to bring in other East European folk tunes, and at other times we play baroque duets (me on clarinet, she on flute – she’s pretty good). So we are essentially like an Old Country kapelye (klezmer band), who would also play regional tunes, popular tunes and classical music in addition to the Jewish repertoire. I’ve always wished we had a fidl (violin), but it’s never really worked out. Still, we hold our own pretty well.

We started preparing specifically for this gig back in November, picking tunes and hashing them out. As it was going to be a full hour of solid music and as my lip has the stamina of a fat giraffe with broken knee caps, we put an accordion duet and an accordion/dumbek piece in the middle of the set list, which totaled about 15 tunes. So we showed up at the appointed time and were directed to the outdoor patio, where the cocktail hour was to be held. I had not known we were going to be playing outdoors, and this caused us some consternation. For one, it was a cold night. Nothing like the frigid football games of my high school and college marching band days when your lips froze to the mouthpiece, but cold enough to slow down my circulation so my fingers felt like gummy worms. Moreover, it’s a lot harder to project without amplification when there are no walls, particularly for the accordion. But we hijacked one of those outdoor space heaters and set up camp under the tent roof, me with my two clarinets (C and B flat) and accordion, Risa with her accordion and dumbek, and all our music stands and crap. As it turned out we were also next to a meat carving table, so we were assaulted with the delicious aroma of roasted mammal that we didn’t have time to eat, besides which I don’t like to get little bits of roasted mammal lodged in my clarinets. In case you were wondering, “What kinds of food, indeed roasted food, doesn’t he like to get lodged in his clarinets?”

At this point I realize that the meat of this review, so to speak, is going to be sliced wafer thin. There’s really not too much to say about our performance, not that this has ever stopped me before. We played our hearts out and we were good. It got really packed so that the only people who probably could hear us were those within about 15 feet or so, including the mammal carvers. The previous evening I had played for our monthly Simcha Shabbat service (explained in an earlier DAA) and this guy had come up afterwards to introduce himself as a fellow clarinet player. He was present at this gig and kept trying to talk to me between tunes about clarinet stuff, like the nature of my hand-made C clarinet, which I must say is damn cool. Yes, clarinets are VERY cool! Anyway, he seemed to dig us, even though I had to keep blowing him off. The crowd in our immediate vicinity kept shifting, and we managed to garner enthusiastic applause from most of them, some more than others. Susy and Ira, who are big supporters of both Jackie and I for some reason (they LOVE hearing about and attending Jackie’s plays), were the most vocal with their appreciation. I love them. In particular, we play this kolemeyke (a Ukrainian/Jewish dance named after the region of its origin) that is a pretty good crowd pleaser. It’s fast and involves a rhapsodic series of 8-bar call-and-response melodies that keep changing key and mode, which makes it continually interesting. We added this arrangement at the end where we stop – break – and then resume with a super-slow-mo repeat of the final theme, which gradually quickens up to Ludicrous Speed and ends with a bang, if I do say so meeself. At this moment Susy and Co. yelled out “Yeah!” It felt good.

When the hour was up we grabbed all our shkoyre (merchandise/stuff/pile of crap – Yiddish is so deliciously flexible) and ran inside and onto the stage facing 40 or so round tables; the place was set up something like an American wedding reception. Noah and Perry, our two lay congregants with good voices and a lot of know-how who lead the singing in most of our services since our Cantor quit a few years ago, led everyone in singing Havdalah, the wrap-up on Saturday night that marks the end of Shabbat and transition back to the drab old week. We played along with the tunes, which somehow made the unchecked sound system scream in feedback agony, forcing us to keep backing away from the microphones until we nearly hit the jazz band’s instruments behind us. But the tunes are pretty and everyone was singing while the only light in the room was given by the triple-braided candle customary for this tradition. It was, for me, a pleasant dénouement to an enjoyable gig. I ended up staying for the balance of the event, during which the comedian occasionally made me chuckle (I have a problem with vicarious embarrassment in the presence of stand-up comedians, funny or no), dinner was decent and the Rabbi was appropriately and thoroughly honored. I spent much of that time thinking about the things I’ll miss about this place, and the opportunities for new musical experiences that await in the next digs. It’s already shaping up to be more interesting than here: during our house-hunting trip next weekend, I’m going to see longtime hero John Zorn and a dozen other great NY musicians play genre-mortar-and-pestling avant-garde tornado music! Till then,

Zay gezunt!

Dancing About Architecture, Vol. XIII

Vol. XIII

Tonight’s Episode: Vinyl is Better, Part I

February 21, 2008

Those of you who know me, which is likely all of you, know of my love affair with vinyl recordings. The home collection is just over 600 (12”, plus a handful of 45s) and always growing, although in spurts. This love affair stems from such a deep-rooted part of me that I can barely scratch (ha!) the surface of how this affectation fits into my overall sense of self. Since this is not my diary, I will not ask you to care. Suffice it to say that growing up in my grandfather’s record store (an official Rhode Island state landmark in Providence, though defunct since ’88) set my pulse to 33 1/3 rpm probably forever. That’s right, my blood spins.

It’s not that I dislike other forms of music media. I also have a ton of CDs and, like everyone else, a big dusty pile of old cassettes. I’m just as likely to buy music on a CD as on a record. Well, almost as likely, and I’ve come here today to tell you one of the reasons vinyl is (usually) better:

You can buy 21 records for $21.

Obviously, I just made this happen. Last weekend I walked up to the tiny public library for their monthly book sale, and in addition to an armful of books for a total of $5, I carried home 21 records sold for $1 each. The lady didn’t even count them, so I could have lied and gotten them for $18, but I was good. So now, er, make it two reasons:

There are innumerable recordings on vinyl which are not now, and may never be, converted to digital format.

I call these special finds “needles”. You gotta flip through a LOT of Bette Midler, Dan Fogelberg, Al Hirt, “A Peoria Christmas with the Peoria Children’s Choir” and the like to get to the good stuff. But still, these two aspects of vinyl combine to fuel my addiction. Here’s a sampling of some of this excursion’s needlestack:

Chubby Checker – “For Twisters Only” [sic]. This record was pressed when he was 19 years old, and it’s an original. Yow town! I also love the copy on the back: “On meeting him, his warmth and personality compel one to relax and just thoroughly enjoy him for the person he is…No performer in recent years has created the ‘light and obvious pleasure’ that appears in the faces of the teenagers above.” How great is this?!

Janos Zerkula and Regina Fiko – Este a Gyimesbe Jartam (Csango Folk Music of Gyimes). As a dedicated after-hours student of Eastern European musics, I will generally pick it up when I find new recordings. This one is a particularly sharp needle. The Gyimes are an ethnic Hungarian people I never even knew about. Zerkula plays hegedu (fiddle) and sings, and Fiko plays utogardon (translated as ‘gardon’). What the flipside is a gardon? Well, back in them olden times, Hungarian gentry decided that percussion instruments were crass, and effectively banned them by refusing to engage groups that included any drums. So musicians got around this silliness by building large, boxy cello-like instruments, strings and all. The player whaps the string with the bow, producing a slap bass-like drone note, and then struts out her elbow so the bow hits the wooden body of the instrument. The effect is a rhythmic “book-chk”, and is usually done in a straight 1-chk-2-chk-3-chk-4-chk rhythm, but sometimes like boom-boom-boom-chk-2-ck-3-ck-4-chk. One of the best nights of my life was six years ago in Budapest, when a musician friend who lives there took my pal Bill and I to a hard-to-find bar/dance hall that was contiguous with the finest little CD store in all the land. If only I’d had more forints! The traditional band played all night long, and included an old blind lady who whacked the gardon like it was her daughter who was refusing to eat her peas. The music, the dancing, the feathered hats, the Unicum (delicious herbal liquor) – splendid. This record is on Hungaraton Records – there’s no way there’s a CD of this stuff. So it’s based on the national style, but with local ethnic flavor. Plus, there’s a huge insert with a lengthy essay on the history of the music in both Hungarian and English.

Bedknobs and Broomsticks – Soundtrack. This is one of those movies I missed as a kid; Jenny introduced it to me just a few years ago. She is absolutely correct: it is delightful. This record is mainly for the benefit of my daughter (and my wife), and it’s complete with an insert with pictures from the movie and a full-length cartoon storybook.

The Boxtops – Nonstop. My first introduction to bandleader Alex Chilton was through The Replacements’ homage hit song entitled, eh, “Alex Chilton”. I then learned a little of the subject’s involvement with The Inkspots and with this band, and how he wrote a lot of the doowop and Motown hits. On this record he and the other four are dressed in matching mod blue suits and are standing on a train engine, and they look like The Monkees. The inside flap has a paragraph about each dude next to a smiling headshot. But lo, the music is amazingly soulful, so much so that I forgot I was listening to a mid-‘60s boy band. Now I know why “I’m in love/what’s that song?/Yeah, I’m in love/with that song.” This is probably on CD, but not for $1!

Memphis Horns – Band II. Funkeh! Featuring guest appearances by Quincy Jones AND Michael MacDonald! Who could ask for anything more?

Staple Singers – Be What You Are. Another great gospel album from 1973, the year of my birth.

Lots of classical, including: Heifetz playing J.S. Bach’s Sonata #2 and Partita #3 for Unaccompanied Violin. I could listen to this all day. Perlman, age 20, playing Paganini’s 24 Caprices. Varese and Stravinsky, two of my 20^th century faves. Vaughn Williams, Janacek, Hindemith. I have a lot of classical records.

The Jam – Sound Affects. You may remember The Jam’s “That’s Entertainment” from DAA Vol. XII. Well, this is the album from whence it comes. Thing is, I already had it. But it was there in the bin, and it’s got a cool cover, and it was only $1! Odder thing is, the back cover of this new one is identical to the back cover of the record sleeve on my older copy, and vice versa. So I picked it up with the intention to give it to someone else, but now I’m holding on to it as a collector’s item. This is in part a self-fulfilling prophecy, because nobody I’d want to give this to has a record player. Oh wait – Brian…? You want it?

Now you begin to see from whence the addiction springs. For a music-lover, it’s impossible to ignore the draw of such great and varied stuff for such a low low price. Anybody wants can come over and listen. Someday I’m going to convert this all to digital anyway. Ciao for now!

Vol. XII update

As expected, the response to DAA Vol. XII has been tremendous. 30% of the 15 people to whom I sent the last link wrote to me privately of their own thoughts and experiences with musical remakes. A few quick notes:
Brian Y. sent me a remake of "Beast of Burden". Remember, I do not care for the Rolling Stones. And this particular song is one of my least favorite, not only by them, but by anyone, ever. So I was quite impressed that this remake by Buckwheat Zydeco actually makes the song decent. Email me if you want to know more.
Jon suggested Jeff Buckley's take on Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah". Both of those artists are completely outside my sphere of musical experience, akin to Metallica and Ani DeFranco. So I can't comment except to say that Jon is smart and trustworthy. He also noted Ray Charles' "Yesterday" - specifically, it's "honey on my ears." This facial accoutrement has never held special appeal to me, but to each their own. Although Jon is smart and trustworthy, he is apparently also one sick mama jama. But it reminded me of Ray Charles' wonderful 1962 album "Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music", which contains a soulful version of "Bye Bye Love".
Dave likes Nirvana's remake of Bowie's "The Man Who Sold the World" better.

Also, a mistake. Here's the link for Camper van Beethoven's remake of "Pictures of Matchstick Men". http://youtube.com/watch?v=WyKDRE2yGR4

Dancing About Architecture, Vol. XII

Like Dancing About Architecture

Vol. XII

Tonight’s Episode: A Dozen Great Remakes You Probably Should Have Heard By Now By Popular Artists

February 12, 2008

I really am not sure what’s about to happen here. I suppose that is always true of all of us all the time, but in this case I mean I’m not sure what I’m doing now with this “blog”. That word is in scare quotes because there hasn’t been an entry here since last October. Sadly, I still haven’t seen any live music since then, although I’ve played a couple times and maybe I’ll get around to blogging that, if I decide you should care. So I'm in a blogging state of mind, and today Nima (equinox-of-insanity.com) finally put the fear of godlessness into me that a world without my blogging is a sad world indeed. This is to say nothing of the state of the world containing said blogging. Sound and fury, baby.

For quite a while, as in at least 15 years, I’ve mulled over the question of musical covers. Every band does them, so we can’t ignore them and lean on our ignorance to deny their existence like that whack job who claims there are no homosexuals in Iran. We might as well face up to them, and as the great Jewish philosopher Hillel famously said of facing up to musical covers, “if not now, when?” They are a curious element in the rock culture universe, and I like things that are “curious”, “elements”, “culture”, I like rocks, and I usually like the universe. So let’s dive in (two paragraphs later, which is as fast as I go.)

First I must make a crucial distinction, that between “covers” and “remakes”. Every band, every one, plays covers. That is, they play other people’s songs because they are good songs, they’re fun to play, and best of all they’ve already been written by someone else. Its part of keeping up your chops, and gives the band something to do when you’ve only got a dozen of your own songs and/or you’re still trying to find your style. There is no reason to ever stop playing covers for their own sake. Bands spend a lot of time messing around, you know. That said, there is no inherent reason why anyone else should have to listen to your cover. If you’re recreating someone else’s work, I don’t need to hear it unless you’ve added something that merits being added. This axiom leads to the Law of Remakes, which separates clearly remakes from covers.

The Law of Remakes:

Do not remake a song unless you have a damn good reason.

In other words, if you and your band decide you are going to re-MAKE someone else’s song, and then expect me to listen to it, your job is to find something in the song that inspires you to make something new to add to it, and this new thing or things must serve the dual purpose of respecting the integrity of the song while simultaneously enhancing it. The listener needs a reason to choose your version over the original. This simple rule is so often ignored or confused. As creatures of habit living in the age of recorded music, we simply love to hear the same recording of a familiar song over and over and over again, even and especially once we know every nuance and further listening will add nothing to our understanding or appreciation of the song (for me, the Police song “Roxanne” is the flagship piece in this category. I never need to hear that song again). This often leads to the misconception that just because someone else records a given song, with a different voice and different production values and different drum beat from the version with which you are intimately familiar, that this new version is somehow creative, when it’s simply reproductive. I generally love people, but when people fall into this trap I hate people. At least, I hate that we do that.

There are, though, many remakes that deserve some props. A select few remakes – I choose my words carefully here – can be said to have followed the Law of Remakes so adroitly, went above and beyond the requirements, you might say, that they actually are better than the original. This rare breed is worth closer inspection, and so I’ve listed a dozen here in no particular order. This list includes a few I’d placed into this elite category, in my mind, years ago, which have waited patiently for revelation. Some others came to me more recently as I was thinking about this blog. Some are obvious; I also considered many obscure ones that might also be great, but for now we’ll limit ourselves here to remakes by more or less “popular” bands.

1. All Along the Watchtower – Jimi Hendrix. http://youtube.com/watch?v=RD7s4i_X-p0. Yes, this is a big fat obvious one. Everybody carries with them the secret special knowledge that this Hendrix powerhouse hit was originally an earthier folk blues by Bob Dylan. Everybody also agrees that, although Dylan’s version is great and he in fact wrote it, Hendrix took this tune, as Jake mentioned earlier today, to another level. He obeyed the Law by upholding the power of the song’s timeless poetry and he superseded this minimum requirement by playing it in the way only Hendrix can play. The only reservation here is that I’ve heard it so much I could use another remake. This leads us to the corollary:

1b. All Along the Watchtower – XTC. (YouTube only has a live BBC session: http://youtube.com/watch?v=hjTSZmDdJdw.) This 1978 version from their terrific pre-Andy Partridge-nervous-breakdown album “White Music” starts with the foundation that Hendrix’ rock-out had already been done and was the more familiar version to most people than Dylan’s. Here Colin Moulding, one of the most adept rock bassists when it comes to rhythmic, melodic and harmonic counterpoint, pulls apart the descending-ascending chord structure like shredded beef and rips out a bass line that jumps all over the scale. You wouldn’t know the song until the lyrics kick in. When Partridge comes in with his (at that time) octave-hopping raving lunatic voice, the lyrics take on a whole new flavor. The opening and finale with the long clamped organ/harmonica chords assures that this version is nothing like the original, and also awesome.

2. Higher Ground – The Red Hot Chili Peppers. http://youtube.com/watch?v=WZat5TbRO3A. Back when this band was following on the heels of The Minutemen and had some good ideas, they recorded several fine remakes, which also include Hendrix’ “Fire” (and the Great Wheel turns). Remakes often diverge from the original in one of two ways, either “turning it up” or “turning it down”. Usually this is all that is done by way of adaptation, making it more of a cover, as in the seemingly endless string of bad punk remakes like Social D’s “Ring of Fire”. But this here was when the Peppers were comfortable with their brand of funk-punk fusion, so it was a perfectly natural step to take Stevie Wonder’s funk classic and add the speedball punk element, without removing the funk within. I just decided that “The Funk Within” is, well I don’t know what it is, but I hope I possess it. And no, you may not have any.
3. I Fought The Law – The Clash. http://youtube.com/watch?v=MBeT4ptY9sY. Apparently the order in this list is quasi more-to-less obvious. Social Distortion or their frontman also released a version of this song, and somebody really needs to tell them to just cut it out. The only band that ever really mattered (who said that? Was it Lester Bangs? I can’t remember) took this good song and made it fantastic. Certainly The Clash admired Bobby Fuller’s punk cred before the term “punk” came to mean something other than “cretin”, but the truth is that they were just too damn good for their own good. The monotone guitar solo (aforementioned in DAA Vol. IX) has so much stronger gravity with the amplified upper octave electric guitar. It’s like the waft of perfume that drags Pepe LePew into a zombie trance. The “six-gun” snare drum double triplet thing is perfect. This is the definitive version, hands down.
4. Satisfaction - Devo. http://youtube.com/watch?v=CvcuaJy9OwI. The Rolling Stones are associated in my mind with The Phantom of the Opera. Everybody loves the shit out of each of them and I just don’t understand what’s so fucking great about either one. I guess the Stones can be proud of making a buttload of cash by making great black music friendly for white audiences, or something. But I do appreciate why this particular track is my dad’s favorite from “the acid rock era”. This from the man who drove across New York state with my mother, twice I think, to see The Doors in 1968. I love that. But back to the remake. Devo is (I think I can still use the present tense) composed of some severely repressed but remarkably creative individuals. Somewhat akin to XTC’s remake described above, which I’m actually listening to right now, this take (a year earlier from the XTC song, in 1977) keeps the song structure but completely rewrites all the parts. There’s a lot more going on here at any given moment than the comparatively primitive arena-rock guitar in the Stones’ original. Plus, Mark Mothersbaugh’s geekified voice is so much more convincing. We all know Mick got plenty of satisfaction.
5. Take Me To The River – Talking Heads. http://youtube.com/watch?v=G2BpsCwUa2I. Let’s start with the foundation that Talking Heads is, if I had to choose, like totally my favorite rock band (1989’s “Naked” notwithstanding). They did things nobody had done before or since, and all of it brilliant. I believe this is the only cover they recorded, and I love it because I learned only much later that it’s originally by the Reverend Al Green. It was a dirty gospel song ironic in its silky delivery. This band turned it into a pumping new wave concert closer with all the intricate and infectious arrangements for which they long ago earned my eternal respect and admiration. To say this version is better than the original is really to say that I simply prefer the style here better, but they did it so well you can’t really fault me for it.
6. Twist ‘n’ Shout – The Beatles. http://youtube.com/watch?v=faVTixv81IQ. Yes, the bloody Beatles. I know, including them in any discourse on pop music is worn, cliché, even tacky. But look, when The Isley Brothers recorded this, they might as well have recorded it as “Stroll and Saunter”. It’s nice and all and it makes me want to throw twigs in a brook from a footbridge. The Beatles saw what this song was really supposed to be, and they were still young and innocent enough that their explosive verve is all genuine. John used to blow his voice out in concerts on this one, not that the hordes of screaming girls really cared.
7. Ball of Confusion – Love and Rockets. http://youtube.com/watch?v=-ALRLZQf42s. How Daniel Ash heard the Temptations’ 1970 Motown hit and imagined its reincarnation as a bass-heavy goth rock song is something I can’t even begin to surmise, but that's part of why I love this band. Several aspects of this remake I find particularly striking. First, Ash’s straight-ahead, deep vocals infect the lyrics with a world-weathered wisdom, whereas the original comes off sounding naïve, even if we know outside of the song that the Temptations certainly had with them the wisdom of their age and experience. The “hey, hey” from Ash just seems more wan. Second, David J.’s driving bass line pushes the song ever forward, where the original seems flat to me. Third, the lyrics which in 1970 may have referred to the ills of the Vietnam war and entrenched racism in America took on a new meaning in the late 1980s – it was as though in remaking the song it became more about the persistence of stupidity in human politics.
8. Kiss – Prince. (Sorry, no link for this one.) I don’t own any Prince albums even though I know the guy’s good. I can’t explain that state of affairs. Especially since the stripped down elemental funk guitar in his version of “Kiss” makes the song so much sexier. The original, by Tom Jones and the Art of Noise, suffered principally because it was by Tom Jones and the Art of Noise. That Tom Jones ever achieved sufficient fame and recognition for me to have heard him is a great example of why every decision made in the 1970s was bad (the main exception being the flowering of the punk/new wave counter-culture that shone like a lighthouse beacon in the thickest fog. Also, I was born in the 1970s). Even if you haven’t heard the original, you know Prince’s remake is so, so much better. It just has to be.
9. Lake of Fire – Nirvana. http://youtube.com/watch?v=7oVvkNp4GdA. Despite the fact that Nirvana was and is still so popular, they actually kinda deserve it. I like them in part because it makes me feel smart and manly when I can trace a band’s major influences all by myself, which I have done for Nirvana. Two bands: Meat Puppets and Pixies. I mean, the very same dang monkey from Pixies’ “Doolittle” album cover is on the back of “Nevermind”. How much more can they spell it out? So it always seemed appropriate to me that Nirvana remade Meat Puppets’ “Lake of Fire”, because it was like them showing us where they came from and how they got to where they were at that time. I really like the original, which is on an incredibly varied double album, but I have to admit it’s one of the more difficult tracks to listen to. Nirvana (probably, to be more precise, Kurt) clearly recognized the song’s potential and it was best realized through their lens.
10. Swan Lake – Madness. http://youtube.com/watch?v=eKwOn5erl1k (live take here). Yet another track from that magical era between 1976 and 1980 when creativity abounded below the pop culture radar in so many spheres that there are few eras which can soundly compete in quantity or breadth. The beauty of this particular remake might simply be in the selection of the tune. This most familiar sweeping melody from Tchaikovsky’s ballet stands in perfect rhythmic counterpoint to the ska backbeat applied by Madness. They further accentuate this effect by cutting the sustained notes in the melody short with the substitution of an un-pedaled piano for the original violins.
11. Pictures of Matchstick Men – Camper van Beethoven. http://youtube.com/watch?v=eKwOn5erl1k. I don’t know who did the original and I don’t care (Actually, I believe it was Status Quo). CVB’s special brand of wiry, scratchy absurdist country-folk rock rarely let me down before and it keeps its promise in this tune. The sudden break in sound at the end of a cadence that is carried forward only by the upper octave violin through a simple little interlude melody always catches me. Then when the band kicks back in, it’s so heavy underneath the violin and vocals, it makes me want to cry.
12. That’s Entertainment – Morrissey. (No link again). About two years ago flipping through a pop station I landed on a cover of the Smiths’ “Girlfriend in a Coma” by some eunuch emo band. The lingering, bitter aftertaste of my reaction at that moment is one of the driving forces behind this over-long essay. You can’t remake that song! You blasted fool! Now I’m not quite a Smiths fanatic, but that song is perfect as it is, one of the few truly perfect pop songs. At exactly two minutes in length, it gets everything exactly right. Trying to remake it is like remaking the film “Psycho”. What is wrong with you?! Anyway, I like ex-Smiths Morrissey’s remake of this already terrific song by The Jam (http://youtube.com/watch?v=CcfEXeNzgdI) not because it’s musically so divergent – it follows the “turn-it-down” path – but because Morrissey rewrote many of the lyrics. His most outstanding talent of lyric-writing was half of what made the Smiths so great (Johnny Marr’s song-craft and guitar work being the other), and so he uses that talent here to subtle but valuable effect. The replacement lyrics are so similar in tone with Paul Weller’s that Morrissey succeeds in painting almost the same picture but with a slightly different hue.

That reminds me: The Jam’s version of the Batman Theme (1977) (http://youtube.com/watch?v=d1yPoW6hsy8) is also wonderful. I guess it stands to reason that great bands will, if they so choose, be in the best position to create great remakes. The lesson here is: play to your strengths. They Might Be Giants should get a runner-up prize for “Why Does the Sun Shine?” (http://youtube.com/watch?v=lwwlK7eCCsk) if only because they are the only ones who could take an insipid but somehow clever 1950s school-reel song and turn it into something transcendent. Second runner-up could be R.E.M.’s 1987 B-side version of the Velvet Underground’s “Pale Blue Eyes” (http://youtube.com/watch?v=nQiJZgsGFfU). Their aesthetic at that time gave this song what it was missing 20 years earlier, primarily not having Nico sing it. It’s just that EVERYbody covers VU songs; it’s like a right of passage for any indie band worth its salt (remember the Cowboy Junkies’ biggest radio hit? It was a turn-it-down version of “Sweet Jane”), but I do like this one. And I’m sure anyone reading this (is there?) would come up with a different dozen remakes that are all great, too. Well, happy listening! YouTube is your friend.

Dancing About Architecture, Vol. XI

Tonight’s Episode: the Tifereth Israel Ad Hoc Polyphonic Klezmer Orchestra and Tizmorim

October 4 and 5, 2007, Tifereth Israel Synagogue, Del Cerro, CA

This was supposed to be a four-parter. We had planned to go see Metric at the House of Blues on Wednesday, and then go back on Thursday for They Might Be Giants. It promised to be a veritable orgy of our favorite recording artists and performers doing what so few others can do, and nobody can do as well. Sadly, scheduling issues and stomachaches (what a funny lookin’ word that is) kept us away. So I am in no position to describe these fantastic performances, as they must surely have been. To make it up to you, I now offer you a deal you can’t lose: go to iTunes right now and download Metric’s song “Empty”. Do it. It’ll cost a buck. Listen to the whole thing, and if you don’t enjoy it, or remain unmoved that this is the sort of song that could launch one of the most compelling and tightly drawn rock concept albums of the decade, I will refund your money. That’s right, folks: if you don’t like it, I will send you one shiny silver dollar, no questions asked. You wanna download a Coldplay track instead, knock yourself out.

And if you haven’t been listening to They Might Be Giants over the last twenty-five years, I can only say I’m sorry for your loss. Get to it! Your life will be appreciably better for it, I promise.

Now to parts three and four, which will feature…me. See, about five years ago my synagogue somehow discovered that I play clarinet, mostly Jewish music even, so someone had the idea to enhance their “family” Shabbat services, the first Friday of each month, with instrumental music. This sort of thing is maybe a California thing, as synagogue services are generally a capella, and strictly speaking there shouldn’t be musical instruments besides voice on the Sabbath (Friday dusk till Saturday dusk). Anyway, I think this place might have already had a piano player doing this, but I got incorporated into the scheme along with a few other congregants, and after a year or so of shuffling through iterations, we’ve settled to me on clarinet, Sandy on piano, and Ted on bass. For a while Ted’s teenage son Ethan was using the venue to beef up his acoustic guitar skills, too, but recently dropped the gig, to our detriment. So now we are a trio; the Rabbi calls us the Tizmorim (song-players).

The gig typically goes like this: I sit in Friday afternoon traffic for an hour or so to get to the other side of Creation on time, and we mess around on our instruments while families with young kids and various congregants who go for this sort of thing file in. The “audience” consists of anywhere from a dozen people to a full house of a hundred-ish; usually it’s somewhere in the middle. We start at precisely Jewish Standard Time of 15 minutes late with the Rabbi leading off with a nigun (a typically wordless melody, e.g. “lai dai dai”) and we pick it up. He then leads through the series of prayers in the service, for which we play whatever melody for the congregation to join in singing, hopefully. Now, Jewish liturgical music is an enormous, chaotic, expanding universe: prayerbooks have text only, and for any piece of text there are a hundred melodies, such that each congregation the world over chooses which tune they dig and sometimes will try out new ones. So in the early days, it was a crapshoot for us because we never knew which melody the Rabbi would start on, or in which key, and we’d have to land on both pretty fast. Now we’ve settled on a routine set of melodies and generally the Rabbi (who always leads off the singing since we have no Cantor) gets pretty close to the key we like, and more importantly, a key he can handle. The installment of such a routine has good and bad sides for me. On the plus side, since I know the tunes now I can experiment in front of a friendly audience (they ain’t payin’ us!), and stretch my pathetically limited range just a little bit. On the minus side, changing the melodies up some could aid in that effort even more. Sometimes now I feel like I’m just calling it in.

Let’s discuss this past Friday’s gig. A little on the light side numbers-wise, but given an artificial boost by the extended family who I’d never seen before but for their new girl’s baby naming (it’s a thing we do for gals in place of the more direct branding thing we do for guys). One of the grandfathers wore a tie with a red blinking light in it. Really put me in the mood for introspective prayer. It was otherwise a pretty typical run. Most of the prayers we play along with happen to be frontloaded, so the first half of the service requires the most intense concentration and effort as we jump from one tune to the next. Both Sandy and Ted have great ears, and can always find the chords, even any tricky transitional ones, so they make it easy for me. All I have to do is play the melody and, depending on the tune, stretch it out and play countermelodies. In general the tunes are pretty simple anyway. Sandy has this tendency to get engrossed in his own noodling at the expense of listening. He’s quite good at it, the noodling, and it can add a lot to the overall sound, but it drives me nuts sometimes, too. It drives me nuts because I have the exact same tendency. It’s like a debilitating seizure that takes over when I sit in front of a piano. There are just so many keys to press! Whee!! This time, though, we all kept it together pretty well. It’s not unfair to say we’re pretty tight now. Some of the tunes are lovely, some are raucous, and some build up. Some are cloying, ugly and tiresome. It’s these last ones that are the biggest challenge for me, because I don’t know how to make them more enjoyable. I am constantly feeling like my playing is just making a bad thing worse.

We had some decent moments this time, but nothing superlative. “L’cha Dodi” offers me an opportunity to do a lot of note-bending and the rhythm section a chance to pump up the volume. We did an OK job on it, but didn’t reach heights we’ve approached a few times before. For “Oseh Shalom”, instead of using the old chestnut melody, we use this modern Debbie Friedman melody I could take or leave, although it is a builder. The trouble I have is that the bridge is awkward because it has a lot of open space, so it sounds lame if I don’t fill it in with a lot of movement. Often I forget the chord progression here, so I am usually shy to bust open for fear of hitting a honker and killing the moment. This time my approach was simply to go up an octave and play LOUDER. Safe, but still I can’t wrap myself around that one. We threw in “Sim’n Tov” for the baby naming, and I can’t say it was the most inspired version we’ve ever done, but the red blinking light was sucking my inspiration, not unlike HAL. After the service we retired to the usual Oneg in the Social Hall (bread, wine, cookies, coffee), and as usual I didn’t really talk to anyone but then that guy that looks like Eisenhower didn’t come tell me I sounded “a little flat” again, so I can’t complain.

Part four of this overlong chapter shall cover the night before the so-called Simcha Shabbat, Thursday night’s observance of Simchat Torah (Simcha means happy – get it?) The latter holiday falls at the end of a series of autumn observances which begin with the very solemn High Holidays and continue with more holidays of diminishing solemnity, so this ending is intended to be a real celebration. Our version involves a short, utterly irreverent service that involves the Rabbi picking on everything and everybody; to our fortune he has a pretty endearing and smart sense of humor. This is followed by a series of seven hakafot (processions) in the Social Hall, in which the Torahs (we have seven, I think) are paraded around by congregants and music is played and dancing is encouraged. This is maybe the fourth year where we’ve added an “Ad Hoc Polyphonic Klezmer Orchestra” to enhance the festivities. I’d say the first two terms in that title are accurate, polyphonic and orchestra are redundant although one would have to concede that those apply, however there is little resembling klezmer music here. It always bothers me when Jews, who might know better, lump Jewish musical styles together even if they have little to do with one another. As Americans we don’t confuse Christian rock with country line dance music, but there you have it. Our Orchestra, then, consisted of Sandy and I, Ted brought his violin, Ethan on bass, our esteemed lay congregant-cum-de facto Cantor Noah singing, and Al and the Rabbi on accordions; the latter led the singing. We played a standard hakafa melody, the Torahs were passed around, and then the Rabbi yelled out song numbers from this nice little Jewish fakebook they put together a few years ago for this event. These were your typical Jewish Hebrew numbers, zmirot (songs, usually sung around the Shabbat table or by kids or whenever, but not liturgical texts) – the same root word as found in Tizmorim and Klezmer. It took about an hour to get through all seven hakafot.

The night was, as ever, a perfect example of the strange middle ground occupied by the Conservative Jewish movement in the realm of religious celebration. The Reform movement (“lazy”), mostly probably don’t show up for this holiday; their take is generally more inclined to the spiritual. On the other end of the spectrum, the Orthodox (“crazy”) and all related stripes (e.g., Hasidic…particularly Hasidic) will party like its 1999! On Simchat Torah it is commanded that one get completely shikker. Commanded! The Orthodox and company take their celebrations seriously, so this holiday to them means not just lots of drinking, but dancing – real, hearty dancing on into the night and clapping and stomping and singing, simchat – the genuine article. Then there’s us (“hazy”). We show up for the holiday, and we try to celebrate. But we’re too uptight to take off the reins and let loose, and we’re too Americanized even to know how. I’m not saying booze has to be a part of it, but it does have its place on the mantle of proper celebration. So instead of a little schnapps and some ecstatic dancing, people were instead divided into five groups: the poor saps marching around more or less alone in the center of the hall carrying the Torahs, kids running around everywhere (that was a good start!), adults standing around the periphery engaged in soccermom chatter, us playing in a line up front, and the alter kochers sitting in chairs to one side. Three of these groups were having fun. We were, I think, although it’s so much more fun to play for people who are dancing; the kids were enjoying themselves, and the alter kochers seemed to be happy actually listening to us play. We could tell because every time we started up a new tune that was familiar to them (as they all would have been), they rocked in their chairs and added enthusiasm to their endless clapping that, I’m sorry, reminded me of somebody holding and clapping the paws of their adorable puppy – meta-clapping for the misguided. One old boy actually got up and danced around in the back with a big grin on his face. I wanted to hug him, he looked so happy. We ended with, dear me, Hava Nagila, and I felt like a goyishe band playing for Jews. But the smaller crowd still remaining got into it and danced, a little. And so the celebration ended, and the two fingers of whiskey I had at home later didn’t really satisfy. They say if you can reach one person in the audience you should leave feeling as though you’ve accomplished something. I can only say that after two consecutive nights of playing for this crowd, watching that one alter bocher dancing in the back made it all worthwhile.